So what actually is the specific difference between social competence in general and Game more specifically? What empowering techniques can you not learn from any sources other than pickup artists and sluts?

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§ 91 Responses to End Game

I think what Deti an others would say is that yes, there used to be voices that taught men these truths about relationships between men and women, but, through a combination of exterior pressure and timidity, those voices have been discredited and silenced.

The only ones left standing and willing to speak these truths are pick up artists, who don’t give a damn what the feminized culture thinks of them. Thus, it is necessary for men wishing to learn difficult truths about how to relate to women to learn from PUAs, since they are the only ones willing to say out loud what many men of previous generations learned from their fathers and other male authority figures.

This argument also delivers a payload of shaming to non-PUA male readers, since the implication is that if we had done our job and weren’t scared into silence by the feminists, men wouldn’t have to go to PUAs.

Now, I don’t think this is entirely true. But I *think* this is where they’re coming from.

I’m surprised no one has made an anti-Game blog with this name already.

I’m still on the fence as to whether you are correct about the essence of Game. My dad’s advice that helped me out of my hopelessness with women was pretty much a synthesis of the pre-Game life skills that AD listed in the other post, without any of the unchastity associated with PUA. Also, among us black folk, the term “game” has been used for decades to generally refer to a man’s comportment or skills. It can refer to anything from basketball to success with women. As I mentioned before, it was long before anyone knew who Roissy was that my dad threw a rubber band at me and said “you need this to hold your game together.”

Maybe we need to differentiate between capital and lower case “game” like we do with Orthodoxy and Catholic.

Maybe we need to differentiate between capital and lower case “game” like we do with Orthodoxy and Catholic.

That or possibly treat it like the relationship between classical liberalism and modern liberalism: they are distinct as a matter of ‘accident’ but the one is the natural progression of the other. I am from a mixed-race family by adoption but I don’t have any real sense of the development of the term in black culture.

Semantics are pretty fluid, which is part of what makes nominalism seem so natural to people. One can still use the term “liberal” to mean generically open-minded or whatever for example, but that is an equivocation if it is used in a way that attempts to make it correspond to the political philosophy liberalism.

This argument also delivers a payload of shaming to non-PUA male readers, since the implication is that if we had done our job and weren’t scared into silence by the feminists, men wouldn’t have to go to PUAs.

The shaming might even be deserved if directed at the right targets. These men are angry at their fathers, and they are angry that the rest of us didn’t come in and act as their surrogate daddy.

But that attitude is unhelpful if they really do want to grow up and be a man.

1. game is in the Bible? Why is your truth “game” rather than the “Bible”?

If game is in the Bible then the Bible is a foundation for game. You should be espousing the Bible rather than game.

2. game isn’t in the Bible? Then why is the entire thing about the truth of human nature and how to overcome it. Why is the entire thing about stewardship and not blaming others for your faults. Why is the entire thing about grace and repentance so that we have no fears and can overcome the world?

Is that not something a Christian woman will latch onto?

3. Game is not about women. It’s about you and your mindset, and your beliefs, and your lifestyle. You change the mind, you change the man.

Guess what the Scriptures speak about? You.

4. Structuring “how to do” and “lines” with women is only a proxy for a change in mindset. It works because actions and beliefs are interrelated to each other. But it’s not the core of what determinates the change. What determines the change is you and your relationship with God.

John,
I think your devil’s advocate position and one of Zippy’s comments neatly overlap – the advocates of “game” are very, very angry and they blame other people; cruel, money-grubbing women and weak, feminized men.
Never themselves.
Think of all the mommy blogs you can find on the internet; thousands of them full of pictures of kids, recipes, poems, and long talks about being a better cook, a better seamstress, a better mother, and a better wife. I, personally, am deluged with them from my wife: ‘what do you think of this dress?’, ‘what about this meal?’, ‘I don’t know if I agree with her argument on how to be a properly submissive wife, what is your feedback?’.
Have you ever seen a “game” blog link to them approvingly? Ever see a Christian “game” blog talk about how to land a wife like that?
If you have, please post a link.
In the meantime go to some Christian “game” blogs like Dalrock and Vox. Now, look around to the sorts of women’s blogs and women they *do* link to often.
Notice a pattern?
It is negative views of women, often. She frivorced her husband; she cheated; she lied; she got him arrested. Try to count up the ratio of links even to blogs like Sunshine Mary vs. links to stories of how evil, horrible, and nasty women are.
Does that sound like a pattern of behavior found in men full of hope and charity? Does that look like the behavior of men focused on finding and keeping a good spouse? Or on helping other men find and keep a good spouse?
Or does that look like the behavior of bitter, resentful men who dislike women?
I haven’t done a solid number crunch on that, so please tell me what you think.

Christian nice guys who believe they were doing everything right before and “only need game” ignore the fact that they need to repent of their sin of the pedestalization of women and their feelings.

It is precisely the mindset that I, as a Christian nice guy, am broken and I need God. I need to repent of my sin and turn from it.

If you refuse to believe that you were a broken sinner as a Christian nice guy then you will defend game with pride and self righteousness.

It is no wonder that it is many of the pro-game Christians dwell on division rather than unity. They dwell on the evils of human nature rather than allowing God to change and restore and help them overcome human nature. They seek truth in the world and find they are only more entrapped.

They may have been led into the pit by blind guides, but they won’t accept God’s offer to help them out of the pit. Instead, they turn to others in the pit for help.

Men like JoJ are a vast exception of the pro-game Christians because they recognize this.

In other words, if Christians cannot take a principled stance against Game then we also cannot take a principled stance against feminism, liberalism, etc. One incidental drop of truth in any basket of lies completely disarms us.

“It is precisely the mindset that I, as a Christian nice guy, am broken and I need God. I need to repent of my sin and turn from it.”

This is 100% true. Having said that, it is one thing to recognize what’s wrong and another to discover what is right. For instance, you can repent of gluttony and sloth, but you still need to find out what actually makes up a healthy diet and exercise plan. To carry that analogy a little further, if you can’t find anyone to teach you to do strength training in addition to cardio, and to eat more veggies and fewer simple carbs, PUA’s will fill the void with steroids and cosmetic surgery.

AD –

Interesting observation about the women’s blogs favored by Christian Game bloggers. I know Vox has little use for mommy bloggers, although he is a huge proponent of motherhood and home schooling.

Zippy,
But “game” *is* feminism.
Think about how the PUA thinks.
What is the first measure of a man’s hierarchical position/worth? – How attractive women find him.
-1) “game” states that much of the value of men is determined by their aesthetic appeal to women.
What is the second measure of a man’s value? How often women sleep with him
-2) “game” states that the majority of the remainder of the value of men is determined by their demonstrated utility to women.
“Game rejects marriage and instead embraces an environment where men and women provide for themselves.
-3)”Game” promotes women in the work place and totally independent of men financially
PUAs reject marriage and promote MGTOW
-4) “Game” rejects marriage as not just valueless but of negative value
PUAs do not want children and several explicitly state that having children lowers your ‘value’ as a man
-5) “Game” rejects children as not even valueless but of negative value.

These ideas [women must be independent; marriage is negative value; children are negative value; men are evaluated on their appeal and utility to women] are the same elements of Feminism despised by opponents of Feminism. Yet they are core ideas and goals of “game”.
If “game” were truly anti-feminist it would reject these ideas. If neoreactionaries were truly insightful and rejected feminism they would inherently reject “game”.

AD:
I don’t agree that Game is feminism any more than slutty behavior is feminism, in part because feminism isn’t a category of behavior and also because feminism is not a necessary context for slutty behavior.

This is 100% true. Having said that, it is one thing to recognize what’s wrong and another to discover what is right. For instance, you can repent of gluttony and sloth, but you still need to find out what actually makes up a healthy diet and exercise plan. To carry that analogy a little further, if you can’t find anyone to teach you to do strength training in addition to cardio, and to eat more veggies and fewer simple carbs, PUA’s will fill the void with steroids and cosmetic surgery.

Correct.

That’s precisely what my blog as well as Chad’s and others are doing. Explicate the Scriptures in order to understand Christian concepts as well as male-female relationship contexts.

Some are blessed enough with fathers to help them in their journey. Others are not.

However, even my blog is not needed and the Scriptures are enough if you hunger and thirst for righteousness God will show you since He is THE Father. This is the power of God.

@johnmcg, being just a little bit bad seems achievable (too achievable!), in a way that being just a little bit Nazi seems not. Given that there is a specific set of Nazi characteristics (e.g. the party platform), then saying of someone he is No True Nazi is definitely provable or falsifiable because there is a sort of checklist (e.g. if some guy said “But I want to support Roman Law and don’t see the big deal of German Law replacing it.” then he is No True Nazi no matter how many swastikas he has.)

Is there a checklist of Bad? Or even of PUA? How many times does the hypothetical No True Bad Boy (he makes girls tingle, but brakes for animals) have to be invoked?

It may be true that me may crib some lessons from how the Nazis managed their railroads.

What we would definitely not do is call it something like “Nazi railroad management” or “American Nazism,” and when challenged, say we only mean the *good* parts of Nazism, or just enough of the bad Nazism to run the trains on time.

Aquinas Dad’s comments are very good. I would add to Zippy’s specific differences proposal:

–Generalized bitterness against women (per A.D.’s comments)
–Manipulation (Of a specifically masculine type as opposed to a feminine type; of course there are feminine forms of manipulation.)

Manipulation is one of those things, like pornography, that is hard to define. Does it always involve deception or lying such as would be wrong to practice on *anyone*, or does it merely involve misdirection and/or head-games that would be okay with implacable enemies but not with innocents and friends? But however one answers these questions, practicing manipulation as a general form of interaction with other people is a great way to become a very bad person indeed, and it is a very bad way to interact with someone to whom one is married or whom one is thinking of marrying.

Both deliberately cultivated bitterness against the opposite sex (in this case women) and the teaching of an glorifying of manipulation are bad things, both go beyond social competence in some more general sense, and it would be argued I think persuasively by those familiar with the phenomenon (though I don’t propose to be the one to argue for it here and now) that both are of the “essence” of Game and, unfortunately, of the manosphere more generally, as Zippy has been using the term “essence.”

Lydia:
“Generalized bitterness” is subjective, and I don’t think it applies. If generalized bitterness were essential to Game then someone without that generalized bitterness could “keep two in the kitty” without that being an instantiation of Game.

Manipulation goes to motives rather than objective behavior so it suffers from a similar problem.

As a general rule, men who are generally bitter toward women are easy to spot and avoid. Bitterness shrivels the soul. One of the problems I have with these discussions here is the tendency to survey a few blogs, lump different categories (PUAs, MGTOW and others) in and try to create some grand unified theory that is just ridiculous. If anything, PUAs tend to enjoy the company of women whereas MGTOW which is where the “generalized bitterness” often legitimately lands are the opposite. MGTOW and MRA often despise the gamers. The manosphere, like all parts of the seedy underbelly is like a semi-anonymous Mos Eisley Cantina. It’s also practice church compared to /b so YMMV.

Of course the problem here is that much of the bitterness of the manosphere has no legitimate outlet. Try to bring up the disproportionate mistreatment of men by the system and someone will say “yeah, well I know this one woman who was mistreated too” as though “we’re all in it together.” We aren’t. The bulk of society is strongly tilted against men both in justice and liberty and firmly in favor of women. But unfortunately, mainstream conservatives agree with liberals on too many points for there to be reasonable changes to correct the situation.

But point out the real imbalance and class privilege that women have in modern society and conservative women like Lydia will just say “you’re bitter.”

@Zippy re: “I disagree.” I know, which is why I want to highlight this distinction. The reason for protective rules and hedged “unnecessary” standards is that it is too easy to cross the line “a little bit”, hence there are extended boundary zones, wide No Man’s Lands, plenty of Turn Back Now signs. Burkas are a great idea, in other words.

jf12:
Highlight away: modesty is impossible, chastity is impossible, burkas or the pervasive pornography of modernity exhaustively describe the possibilities, etc. The more you contrast this lunacy to rational Christianity the better, as far as I am concerned.

Once you have accepted that personal empowerment must push its way up against every boundary (including nonexistent ones) you’ve made moral reasoning impossible, and all that is left is a choice between burkas and Jersey Shore.

Mike T:
It is obvious that women as a class are privileged by the modern sociopolitical regime, because criticism of women as a class is socially and politically punished in ways that criticism of men as a class isn’t. (The “modified Voltaire rule” if you will).

I admit to being a little surprised that manipulation should be considered a matter of motive *rather than* objective behavior but that unchastity should, in contrast, be considered a matter of objective behavior. They both strike me as features of (aspects of, examples of) objective behavior, and in much the same way. But, again, I’m not trying to engage in a knock-down debate.

Lydia:
FWIW I am much more sympathetic to manipulation than to generalized bitterness. In my previous comment (posted from a smartphone) I may have addressed it more flippantly than it deserves, and I’ve also had a bit more time to think about my reluctance.

Women act in a slutty manner for all sorts of different reasons, and I suspect that some of those reasons might be difficult to characterize as manipulation. For example a woman might actually dress in a slutty manner to please herself: she may be trying to prove something to herself, it might be more about her than about trying to get men to do what she wants, etc.

Would that make her behavior not-slutty? I don’t think so: I think the motive for her slutty behavior doesn’t make it not-slutty, even if that motive can in principle be something other than manipulation.

Now slutty behavior among women is not something unique to modernity, mostly because women have always had to get things done by convincing men to do them. Modernity exaggerates all of these things, of course, but there is a reason why the oldest profession is called the oldest profession and people don’t think of male prostitutes when the euphemism is used.

If I am right and Game is just the surfacing of ‘slutty behavior’ among men in a manner specific to men then the same sorts of considerations about motivation would apply. A man might (though this isn’t entirely clear) engage in “Game” behaviors without an intention to manipulate, but it would still be the male version of sluttiness.

I suppose I was thinking of circumstances where we are told that some kind of Game is helpful to a man for controlling his wife or getting her respect. I suppose those men would try to they are not behaving unchastely, because either their goal isn’t always sex (maybe it’s just getting the wife not to nag or something) and also because even when the goal is sex, it’s with their wife, so not unchaste. However, in such a case the methods recommended could still be called (or I would be inclined to call them) manipulative. They would involve “head games,” power games, pretense of various types, trying to exercise power in a roundabout fashion that is effective because you know the “enemy” but the “enemy” doesn’t really know you, and the like.

Well, remember that chastity isn’t avoidance of sex and sexuality, it is correct use of sex and sexuality. And in the context of marriage the use of sexuality to manipulate one’s spouse is a morally wrong use of sexuality: that is, inchastity.

I do see that and entirely agree. There are other ways to manipulate than *by* the use of sexuality, unless perhaps one means something very broad by “sexuality.” I was thinking more of manipulation by, say, pretending to be strong or tough-guy when one is not really strong, perhaps pretending to one’s wife that one is indifferent to her (not just sexually, but generally), cold shoulder treatment, wearing various masks. Flattery. Various tactics, not all of them related to sex in an obvious fashion.

And in the context of marriage the use of sexuality to manipulate one’s spouse is a morally wrong use of sexuality: that is, inchastity.

With regard to men, this has to be qualified. If a man ratchets up his “alpha behavior” in response to a wife misbehaving he is indeed using quasi-sexual behavior on his wife. The problem herein is the behavior that the women find sexually desirable is also necessary leadership behavior. For example, when she uses sex as a weapon her husband gives her the cold shoulder and acts tougher to imply he could easily live without her. Or even going so far as to not stop women from flirting with him to let her see unequivocally that other women would replace her if he permitted it, and the only reason she’s safe is he is unwilling to break his vows.

I know some of the anti-gamers find that last one “unchaste” but I liken it to a man leaving the impression with a possible assailant that he could unleash overwhelming force at any provocation. Putting the fear into the criminal is neither unjust nor wicked. The one being wronged has no duty to control what the wrong party thinks may be the consequence of their continued misbehavior. They have no duty to assure them that it will end well. This is why it’s one thing for a top man/alpha to make it clear that the wife is functionally powerless because the only reason she isn’t being cheated on is his steadfast committment to an ideal whereas the ordinary herb’s fidelity is taken less seriously because of limited choice. But that’s all sort of a digression…

There are other ways to manipulate than *by* the use of sexuality, unless perhaps one means something very broad by “sexuality.”

What is odd is that frequently generic issues of leadership become sexualized to the point where both the nature of the thing and its applicability outside of the context of sex (generally speaking) become obscured. Once you’ve noticed that this is happening you see it everywhere: truth delivered in a package of inchastity distorts the truth.

Take the idea of a “fitness test”, where a follower challenges a leader on something specific (lets call it “the issue at hand” or just “the issue”).

What I realized after thinking about it for a while is that, sure, women do this frequently, but men do it even more. That buzzing in my head was the cognitive dissonance between the narrative and reality.

Followers challenge leaders all the time, and if a leader is always giving in to his followers he will lose their respect both because (1) he is wrong frequently enough about substantive matters that the challenges become a notable feature of his leadership and (2) he doesn’t stand up for himself, so he is a poor leader: he just caves every time someone challenges him. A leader who has inspired doubt in his followers will receive more challenges, and the “issue at hand” will become ever more trivial — but that doesn’t mean that followers don’t actually want their way when it comes to the issue at hand. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a follower challenge a leader (including a wife challenging a husband) where the follower didn’t actually want her way. It is then supposed to be some fantastic insight that a woman who disrespects her husband after his repeated leadership failures is also not generally sexually attracted to him.

In short, followers need strong leaders and smart leaders, challenges to those qualities will naturally arise when preferences conflict, and followers will naturally lose respect for leaders who fail to exhibit both qualities in the face of challenges. The leader is almost never the biggest scariest lunkhead; the biggest scariest lunkhead respects and follows the leader, because he is both tough as nails and is also right most of the time.

So the fitness test as expressed by Game is actually wrong. It has led people to believe that in a fitness test the woman doesn’t really want to get her way on the issue at hand. But like all followers she pretty much always actually does want her way on the issue at hand, however trivial. This short term desire frequently conflicts with the long term desire for strong and smart leadership; but short term desires and long term desires are in conflict all the time, and a good leader knows how to navigate that rather than inventing the notion of a challenge where followers don’t care about the issue at hand at all and are just throwing rocks like little children. If you are being pelted with rocks and garbage for literally no reason at all, you aren’t the leader.

This gets to a larger point that goes beyond Game as prescribed behavior. In general the ontology underlying “Game” is disastrously wrong because it amounts to “liberalism for men but not for women”. That is, it basically attempts to be against feminism without being against liberalism more generally, and is thus really just a new form of self-castrating neoconservatism. The reason “neoreaction” attracts so many libertarians is precisely because of this: they see something that proposes to let them save what they want from liberalism, rather than accepting their place in a naturally hierarchical society of men.

As I have pointed out many times now hierarchy among men is perfectly natural, men are natural followers as well as natural leaders, etc.

Now notice the specific difference of Game in action: instead of being focused on being a good leader for the common good of the led community, Game prescriptions when it comes to fitness tests are focused on projecting strength and smarts, leading to respect and deference by women, leading to sex.

The specific difference between social competence generally and Game specifically is male inchastity.

Thanks, Zippy, I think I see more clearly how you are using the term “sexuality.”

Another point that I think supports what you are saying about Game’s not being thoroughly enough anti-liberal is that Game proponents (or manosphere types more generally, with whom I am more familiar) tend to accept feminist evaluations of a lot of things. For example, take the idea that feminism represents women’s interests, that feminism is somehow truly feminine. Obviously feminists (both male and female feminists) think that and want others to think that. But it’s surprising how many people in circles that _hate_ feminism also think that. Hence, the evils of feminist ideology become the evils of femininity or of women generally. I had an on-line conversation once with someone just _mildly_ influenced by the manosphere in which I was pointing out that the National Organization for Women is rabidly pro-Moloch not because its membership is largely female, as if there is something inherently infanticidal about women qua women, but because pro-abortion principles were built into its founding documents. You can actually find its statements of principle on-line. In other words, that’s the ideology on which it was based. It didn’t adopt that ideology over time because that is what female groups or groups set up for women are always likely to gravitate toward by natural osmosis. Why should we accept NOW’s own evaluation of itself? We know that feminism is a crazy ideology, so let’s challenge it at its root. Let’s point out that it _doesn’t_ really represent women’s best interests, that there is _nothing_ truly feminine about killing babies, that women who buy into it are harkening, stupidly, to ideologues, both male and female ideologues, who espouse a wickedly false view of the world.

Or, to give another example: Feminism teaches that marriage and male-female relationships are all about the power struggle and mutual manipulation. We should _reject_ that ideological commitment, not _accept_ it and choose a side–say, the male rather than the female side. St. Paul teaches male headship, and his teaching on Christian marriage could not be farther from, “How can I keep the power balance on my side rather than my spouse’s side in the Struggle for Survival that is marriage? What are my weapons? What threats do I have?”

Re: boundaries. I agree that the essential component of modernity is that “personal empowerment must push its way up against every boundary (including nonexistent ones)”. But it’s not because of some black-and-white edge-detecting fallacies of modernity, it’s because “gray is ok” or something.

Back in ancient times, eons ago, like maybe the 1950s, when black was more blackish and white was more whitish, the idea of sharp boundaries made staying away from the boundaries EASIER, not harder. Knowing there was a cliff edge nearby over which you would definitely fall if you got too close, kept you away from the cliff.

Even though it is true that “only” 10% of the time if you came within inches of the cliff you would fall off, and even though it is true that 0.00000001% of the time that even if you stepped over the edge an updraft would blow you back, it still makes good sense both to know where the edge is to within millimeters, and to stay well away from it, many meters away.

Sorry for reopening a dead thread, but this seems like the right place to post this. There’s a blog I read, Rural Revolution (it’s not related to the mano-, reactionary, or trad- spheres at all) which had a post recently about a young woman who has had a lot of difficulty finding an appropriate young man to date. In the comment thread, a woman wrote this (I’ve broken it into paragraphs to make it more readable):

I would like to open up the discussion about young men also. My son is a former Marine, raised in a Christian home, educated in a public school (town less than 40K) and can’t seem to find a decent girl. He has had his wild days and it looking for a girl to be his best friend. He works a full time blue collar job and helps my husband and I operate our small homestead. (Hubby works fulltime outside of home too).

My son is not Mister perfect but would treat a woman like she was a princess if he every finds one worthy. He was raised by a single mom and 2 older sisters for many years and knows how to treat a lady. However, the girls in his social network have been with multiple partners, have 1 or more children, just moved out from living with last boyfriend, just looking to “shack up” not a commitment, etc etc.

The girls he meets that are very nice young ladies are busy with college or careers and aren’t “ready to settle down yet”, but 6 months later announce they are engaged. He can’t seem to get past 2 or 3 dates before he is given the brush off or asked to move in together. Also most girls he has met get very upset if he doesn’t talk to them multiple times a day or are very distrusting when text messages are returned immediately. This is impossible since he is busy working but they don’t seem to care. What is a young man to do? He has tried many of the suggestions readers have posted including online sites with no luck. I will read others comments with great anticipation.

So, I’ve read enough game sites now to know exactly what gamers would recommend this young man do. And you know what? I think it would probably be more effective than what’s he’s doing now; a Christian game proponent like Joseph of Jackson could help this young man see what he’s doing wrong, I think.

And it’s mostly women in the thread, and some offer okay advice, but there is no shortage of this kind of advice, either: “Don’t write off the single moms right of the bat, just because they messed up. They might have been thinking they were headed down the isle to happily ever after and then things went south. It happens. She just may have been young and not had the guidance she needed then.”

I think Aquinas Dad in the past has made some suggestions like Toast Masters and the like. These are good enough suggestions, but would they really be effective in sorting out what’s wrong with this young man’s approach?

I feel bad for him. Zippy, it’s hard not to notice the fact that he could probably get advice at CH that would help him land one of the “nice” college girls who is currently blowing him off. I don’t know…I know game is probably immoral, but the gamers certainly do have some targeted, specific advice that would probably help this kid out a lot.

For those who don’t want to click over, here is the second comment his mother left in that thread:

Most dating for young people today is done via social networks, such as Snapchat or Skype. If you become friends in this way and would like to have more one on one face time then a physical place is chosen and a date is arrange. He sent the last young lady a beautiful floral arrangement to her work place, which he has never done before ($50 spent). She replied with this is nice and sweet but I am not ready to settle down. He has tried to explain that he is not looking to settle down tomorrow, he just wants to be friends and get to know each other better (old fashioned courting) but it doesn’t seem to help. We live in the rural outskirts of our town, but there aren’t many “farm girls” around here because most of the land is managed by large farm corporations that live several miles away. As for meeting “nice” girls more than 50% of his graduating class of 300 + students (2010) already have at least 1 child out of wedlock. The nice girls all left for college and will never return here because there are no good jobs. Young people in this community are not going to church because most parents don’t attend church either. Youth groups are for high school students and there is no other social organizations to join. Our community is dying, jobs have left, the young people left are becoming rowdy and troublesome and the rest is seniors. Most middle class, middle aged families are leaving because of the lack of jobs. Sorry for the long post but he is a nice young farm kid. He was raised on a dairy farm before we moved to this home and he wants a homesteading, prepper, survivialist mindset girl that wants to live the same way. Most of his girl selection are too stuck in Hollywood or have their heads in the sand as to what is happening in the world.

Here’s the thing, SSM: All you’re proving is that there’s lots and lots of bad advice out there. That doesn’t mean the solution is to ask the perverts. Yeah, Roissy might be able to help him find a woman, but that’s not all Roissy is going to do.

We might now know where he should go, but we do know that answer is “not there”.

Good call, Malcolm, if you think game is immoral Sunshine then how could you use the ends to justify the means? That works for utilitarians but not for moral, honor-bound people.

What that young man must do(I used my hardcore math skillz 2 dedoosh that he’s 21-22) is go where all the good young women are. He doesn’t need to go to college if that’s not his thing but he needs to be around college aged girls. In an environment like a college, there is an unbelievable dearth of young women. Really attractive young women as well. The odds of finding just one decent girl in such an environment is likely. I will bet that I could find atleast 30 young, attractive decent Catholic girls and that’s 29 more than I need or want.

Also, Sunshine, I very much doubt it’s his lack of “game” because the man’s a Marine and therefore has a pair of balls and doesn’t need a bunch of fruity little tactics to get laid.

His problem is that many girls do not want the homesteading lifestyle which is not a slight against him or them. Malcolm and I have a bigger pool because we’re college aged guys who are going for good Christian girls who want the typical middle class Christian lifestyle.

Unlike us, the young marine’s pool or prospects is smaller not because of his lack of game but because of his lifestyle interests are quite specific and what he needs to do is try to find a good Christian girl who is into homesteading. That part is pretty difficult. I guarantee you that this young man’s problem is not getting or keeping girls, heck, if he was a typical college Christian he wouldn’t have a problem(I am not saying he should become one. He should do what fulfills him), his problem is finding the girls best suited for him.

Not to threadjack, but I wouldn’t say my pool is huge. Due to a medical condition I have a permit but can’t (yet) drive, meaning I am driven essentially to community college (I’ll be taking summer classes) and home, and possibly restaurants in between if I’m hungry. Community college, trust me, does NOT have a lot of “good Christian women”, at least where I live.

I do work, but at my job I am literally the youngest person there by, as far as I’m aware, at minimum two years, and nobody there is “available” in the slightest. And my Church is tiny, and I mean really tiny. There is no girl there near my age.

Most importantly: I’m shy, which means I have a fear of talking to people (not a phobia, but a regular old fear). This is something I’m trying to get over but it’s there and it’s a problem.

Hopefully things will change this Fall. I’ll still be commuting, but to a Catholic School, and I’ll be driving by then as well.

…But, to keep to the topic, that doesn’t mean I’m going to be following the pick-up artists’ advice.

You’re what, 19, Malcolm? I’m almost 21. You and I both have enough time to find a wife. Keep your chin up man, I’ve actually been sick for the last three years and haven’t been able to go to college at all until this summer.

I agree, but who will explain to him what he needs to do to fix his “beta” tactics? The game guys would, in very concrete steps. What do we non-gamers have that would be equally as helpful? Joseph of Jackson comes to mind, but he teaches game, or some form of it.

Svar:

I very much doubt it’s his lack of “game” because the man’s a Marine and therefore has a pair of balls and doesn’t need a bunch of fruity little tactics to get laid.

It doesn’t seem that he wants to get laid but rather to find a wife. It seems like some of the girls are willing to engage in sin with him but not settle down and get married; they flee when they realize that’s what he’s after. Perfectly strange, isn’t it?

Anyway, it seems like he doesn’t need help being a man; he can do all kinds of provider/protector type stuff, presumably, since he’s been a Marine and is working on his parents’ farm in addition to a blue collar job. It seems like his problem is specifically understanding female nature. He comes across as needy and supplicating when interacting with females, at least according to what his mother writes.

I accept Zippy definition of game as the expression of male inchastity. I don’t think this young man should learn “game”, which is really just a faggy, manipulative way of getting women to make themselves sexually available when they otherwise wouldn’t. He shouldn’t do that.

But it does seem like the game guys are the only ones that I can think of who are explaining in concrete, practical terms what women are really like. For example, this young man is clearly being fitness tested by the girls who demand that he call them multiple times per day; who else other than the game pervs is explaining this to young men, though? Remember, this boy was raised by a single mother – he had no father to even potentially teach him positive masculinity and the truth about women.

Or the thing with buying the girl he wanted to go on a date with a flower arrangement that cost $50 – we’ve all read CH’s classic “Be a Skittles man” post, right? I mean, it’s kind of hard not to notice that CH perfectly explained this scenario, right?

It reminds me of Dalrock’s Romance 101 post where he said something like “Women want flowers but only from a man they are attracted to.” This young man is trying to attract women the wrong way; flowers don’t attract a girl. He doesn’t need to learn game, but he needs useful, practical explanations of what he’s doing wrong, and other than JoJ (and of course scuzzy pick up artists), I don’t know where this young man could get such advice.

“What do we non-gamers have that would be equally as helpful? Joseph of Jackson comes to mind, but he teaches game, or some form of it.”

Is that the Koanic Soul guy? Hell no, that’s a bad idea. Sunshine, what these gamers do is cause young men to become bitter and cynical. Most young men are idealistic and while that is admirable, you would be right to say that doesn’t help in the practical matters. That being said, cynicism and bitterness are not any better and corrupts the soul. He needs to learn to keep holding to the ideals while acknowledging the realities.

“It doesn’t seem that he wants to get laid but rather to find a wife. It seems like some of the girls are willing to engage in sin with him but not settle down and get married; they flee when they realize that’s what he’s after. Perfectly strange, isn’t it?

Anyway, it seems like he doesn’t need help being a man; he can do all kinds of provider/protector type stuff, presumably, since he’s been a Marine and is working on his parents’ farm in addition to a blue collar job. It seems like his problem is specifically understanding female nature. He comes across as needy and supplicating when interacting with females, at least according to what his mother writes.”

The fact that they want to sin with him means that he’s not unattractive. I will bet that he is physically attractive and he knows how to be a man. I assume that he might be a bit shy around women(lots of masculine young men are, well, mainly the Christian ones) and the neediness is off-putting to girls the same way a girl who is too eager to become committed is also off-putting(from my experiences it can be a bit terrifying).

This is what I think he needs to do. He needs to realize that he’s 21-22 and that he doesn’t have a reason to be needy or desperate, he has time. He should go out with girls but not immediately tell them his intentions unless they try to have sex with him. He should refrain from getting in too deep and giving pricey gifts until it is appropriate(I would say months of serious dating) and remember that there is a time and a place for everything.

“I accept Zippy definition of game as the expression of male inchastity. I don’t think this young man should learn “game”, which is really just a faggy, manipulative way of getting women to make themselves sexually available when they otherwise wouldn’t. He shouldn’t do that.”

It seems that they want to have sex with him regardless. Game would only net him an unchaste girl that would not be any good for him anyway.

“For example, this young man is clearly being fitness tested by the girls who demand that he call them multiple times per day;”

Just tell him not to do that then. I don’t like talking to most young women on the phone much because they’re boring and talk about stuff I don’t care about. The only exceptions would be the female friends of mine whom I’ve known for years and see as sisters, I like talking to them.

” Remember, this boy was raised by a single mother ”

You said he has “parents”. Meaning a father and a mother. I have a father and he never taught me shit about women. I had to find out just by observing and talking to older men and women.

“Or the thing with buying the girl he wanted to go on a date with a flower arrangement that cost $50 – we’ve all read CH’s classic “Be a Skittles man” post, right? I mean, it’s kind of hard not to notice that CH perfectly explained this scenario, right?”

I think that if this young man gave that girl skittles it would work only because she would find it funny but only because they’re not in a relationship. In a relationship it would be a jackass thing to do and she would get hurt.

He should not give girls flowers not because skittles works better but because there is a time and a place for everything and that’s in a relationship that has been going steady for a while.

Sunshine:
I haven’t had time to do more than quickly skim the comments here, and I have not followed any links. That is especially unfair given the length of my present comment. But given my ‘elevator pitch’ apprehension of the situation with all the caveats that implies, let me see if I can restate the problem in terms that make sense to me. Afterwards I’ll offer an opinion that echoes somewhat what Svar and Malcolm are saying.

Here is my restatement of the problem:

Our society today labors under a terrible double standard. Fatherless women who want to make themselves attractive to men have all sorts of resources (like Cosmopolitan Magazine) to draw upon which teach them distorted-but-partially-true things about male human nature. And they have all sorts of places to go to learn how to be even more slutty than the other women they are competing with, in order to attract that male attention they crave.

This is fundamentally unfair to men who have grown up as the fatherless children of you-go-girrrl single moms and others with feminist fathers who are ineffectual precisely because they are feminist. The Church is not their Daddy; and it is really too much to expect them to look at the world around themselves critically, do some actual thinking for themselves and take some actual initiative themselves, read antifeminist stuff that has been around at least in fringe spaces (analogous to the manosphere in terms of reach — you can find it, but you have to go looking for it) since before the existence of the Internet, “just get it”, and grow the f**k up.

These men need their version of Cosmopolitan too, because otherwise the situation is Just Not Fair. So Roissy and Game have to be marketed far and wide on the Internet by Christians and for Christians in order to correct this terrible double standard.

Here is my FWIW opinion:

First, it isn’t clear that the access women have to all of this empowering material actually improves their lives, knowledge, or prospects, objectively speaking. What knowledge they do gain from it tends to distort other, more important knowledge, for example. There is a double standard, but it isn’t clear who it really benefits (if anyone) in the long run. It is much more important to take out the trash than it is to get hung up on the fact that women have so much more of it.

Second, any woman who fitness tests left and right should be immediately nexted as wife material, period; men should not date/court outside of the context of evaluating possible marriage; and it doesn’t really matter in the least whether she nexts herself or if he does it. The important thing is that she is out, out, out, done, don’t let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you.

Third, as Malcolm the Cynic has emphasized a number of times, marriage is not necessary; and furthermore, marrying poorly is far worse than not marrying at all.

“I agree, but who will explain to him what he needs to do to fix his “beta” tactics? ”

Unfortunately, as of right now this question goes unanswered. I have made the case on my site that I will do it (as a father of a daughter and proponent of courtship in my home) and I think HHG has also nodded to that idea. For better or for worse, there is a huge segment of the male popluation raised without fathers. If they are to be salvaged as possible husbands….? I really don’t know. I had a strong dad and two older brothers so I can’t relate.

In my own case, I read that part about the 50$ floral arrangement with the same cringe everybody else on here did. But it wasn’t always so. I had to learn the “nice guys finish last” lesson over a lifetime of trial and error. But that crap is sold to pretty much every man on Earth now as “the way to attract girls.”

Third, as Malcolm the Cynic has emphasized a number of times, marriage is not necessary;

Strictly speaking, this is true. However, the resources to support a man seeking to live a celibate life are even scarcer than those teaching authentic manhood. Given the state of our culture, the number of those who need to marry rather than burn is at an all time high. I think we do a disservice to young men if we just shrug and say “eh, marriage isn’t really necessary.” Speaking for myself, that would be binding a heavy burden on on them that I’m not willing to move with my little finger.

So I think its necessary to do the heavy lifting to actually help them choose mates and choose them well.

However, the resources to support a man seeking to live a celibate life are even scarcer than those teaching authentic manhood.

So if this is true, why should we be helping to find better mates for people rather than trying to help people live a celibate life? OR better yet, simply providing the resources to help people live as better Christians, period?

Also, it’s not rocket science. It’s not like the sexual marketplace, where you need to navigate psychology and peer pressure and all sorts of other things in order to avoid getting sucked into a terrible marriage, or into having sex before marriage.

It’s just not getting into a romantic relationship with somebody. Congratulations, you now know how to live a celibate life.

To answer your question, by “Not a priority” I simply mean that I’m open to what life throws at me. Priesthood? Possibly. But simple celibacy is a possibility as well. The Principal of my old High School (still there today) was a good man, and entirely unmarried. If I remember correctly when asked about it he just said that he devoted his life to the school (and by extension, serving the Church in that capacity). He is not an old man, either. Forties maybe? And my Aunt, who is in her fifties, was never married. She started her own charity giving toys to children in need.

And marriage is a possibility. But St. Paul said it’s better to be celibate, so right now I’m not concerned with seeking it out. It’s quite possible I’m not being called to married life, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The conversation seems to be heading this way so I’ll say this now: I’ve had friends who were depressed. Trust me, I am NOT depressed. I’ve seen what it’s like, and thank God I’m not going through that, and never have.

So if this is true, why should we be helping to find better mates for people rather than trying to help people live a celibate life? OR better yet, simply providing the resources to help people live as better Christians, period?

HOW one lives as a better Christian is partly dependent on one’s vocation. Those who are called to marriage shouldn’t be herded into celibacy just because navigating the SMP and marriage is hard (and celibates shouldn’t be pressured into marriage.)

Also, it’s not rocket science. It’s not like the sexual marketplace, where you need to navigate psychology and peer pressure and all sorts of other things in order to avoid getting sucked into a terrible marriage, or into having sex before marriage.

It’s just not getting into a romantic relationship with somebody. Congratulations, you now know how to live a celibate life

Sure lets gloss over loneliness, not having a licit outlet for sexual desires, and foreclosing the possibility of having kids.

Look, I’m not bashing celibacy. If anything I think Protestants need to learn from Catholics about doing a better job of pastoring people who are living a celibate life. The Catholic church has a much better handle on celibacy as a vocation. But there’s heavy lifting involved in following either vocation and we shouldn’t just shrug at people not called to celibacy and tell them that marriage isn’t necessary.

Those who are called to marriage shouldn’t be herded into celibacy just because navigating the SMP and marriage is hard

How is it possible for someone to be called to the vocation of marriage without a specific prospective spouse to marry?

Celibacy is the default state of life, morally mandatory sexual abstinence is a virtually universal experience for everyone (including those called to marriage) at some point(s) in life, and Christians need to wrap their heads around that and accept it as a first premise. In fact I’d go so far as to suggest that it is a very, very bad idea to go into marriage without that prior understanding.

Personally I am against any ‘pastoral initiatives’ which do not take all that for granted and treat the subject openly and honestly; because I don’t think we should be out there marketing the new iChrist 7s to what Mark Shea calls Generation(s) Narcissus.

…we shouldn’t just shrug at people not called to celibacy and tell them that marriage isn’t necessary.

Who says we should shrug? It’s a legitimate point that a lot of people simply do not consider, even as a possibility. Pointing out to people that not getting married is better than a bad marriage, and that there are other options besides marriage, is a mercy, not a dismissal.

Also, I do not think the relevant Biblical passages were talking about people burning in lust, period. I believe Zippy said this, but if you are burning in lust not for a specific person you should probably get this fixed BEFORE you consider marriage. I believe St. Paul was referring to a couple burning in lust for each other.

If this is the correct interpretation, and I think it is, it is quite possible that this young marine isn’t actually being called to marriage anyway. But I genuinely doubt he has ever even considered the possibility of NOT getting married. Most people I know have never entertained “I’ll just stay single” as a live option, and that’s a problem.

How is it possible for someone to be called to the vocation of marriage without a specific prospective spouse to marry?

I’ll confess to not knowing how y’all handle this. But what I was taught growing up was that one’s calling could be determined based on temperament, spiritual gifts, etc. So that God made people with certain traits so that they could fill certain roles (married life/celibacy, pastoring/teaching, etc.). In practice, they never seemed to think anybody was called to celibacy and it usually led to questions like “what’s wrong with him, doesn’t he like girls?” Any guy who was still single when he graduated from seminary had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting assigned to a church.

So like I said, there’s room for improvement in how some churches handle celibacy.

Patrick and CJ:
My own view, FWIW, is that the idea of a vocation ordained by Providence absent the the particular circumstances and means to carry it out is a contradiction in terms.

I think that what happens rather pervasively under liberal Christianity is that people want what they want, believe that God wants them to be haaaaaaaappy so they should get what they want, and insist that their vocation is X even absent means and circumstances (e.g. feminist women who insist that they have a vocation to the priesthood).

Goodness, no! I’d never advise people to seek out advice from him. JoJ is a Christian man whose story was written about on my first blog; he got excommunicted from his church for teaching a Christianized form of game to some men in his church. He has a blog here now.http://josephofjackson.wordpress.com/

Sunshine:

I don’t know where this young man could get such advice.

Svar:

Zippy, the Orthosphere, Chronicles.

I like and read all those blogs, but would they appeal to a 21-year-old man from a blue collar/rural background, perhaps not highly educated? Would he be able to wade through all the theology and philosophy discussions and figure out the practical realities of how 40 years of feminism has warped our society and that everything he’s been taught about women is pretty much wrong?

It would be nice if some youngish Christian man started a non-game blog that wrote in clear and concrete terms what’s wrong with how young men are being taught to relate to women. The first lesson could be about how you don’t have to take on some other man’s kid. This would ultimately be beneficial to women as well because most women do want to marry and if they figure out that no man will marry a woman who’s had an OOW child, maybe they’ll learn to stop having OOW children.

Let’s look at some of the things SSM is talking about here, shall we?
SSM wrote,
“…he could probably get advice at CH that would help him land one of the “nice” college girls who is currently blowing him off….”

You mean the CH that teaches men to
[all direct quotes, BTW]
“Make her jealous” by openly flirting with other women
“Evade, tease, obfuscate…” and never directly or honestly answer
“…when she has displeased you, punish swiftly”
“Always keep two in the kitty” i.e., never be faithful to any woman

And I suspect they guy wants to do more than ‘land’ a college girl.

Hardly how a Christian man behaves in any circumstance, let alone when looking for a wife. Never forget – PUAs like this tell you to sleep around as much as possible and never marry ever.

SSM also wrote,
“But it does seem like the game guys are the only ones that I can think of who are explaining in concrete, practical terms what women are really like”
Unfortunately, the description “game”: gives of women (and men for that matter) are contradictory to how Christianity describes women and men. This is about 1/2 of the issues ‘Christian “game”‘ faces – it is irreconcilable with reality.

Game is technocratic* because it replaces the human act of meeting a woman and wooing her with the automated act of applying science-based techniques to a woman. It occurs to me now that it is the technocratic being of game that leads it to be specifically unchaste, albeit indirectly.

What I surmise is that the purpose to which game is put (unchaste behaviour) proceeds directly from the mode of game (set of pseudo-empirical techniques). The reason being that the technocratic way of acting (the mode) defines the utilitarian nature of the opposite-sex encounter. The woman must be “used” in a tangible way – utilitarian methods lead to utilitarian sexual outcomes else why use such methods – and this necessarily excludes non-material, non-utilitarian considerations like love and chastity.

Now it is said the Christian gamer could, in theory, use game as a set of techniques directed to chaste ends. Yet replacing the organic human act with the technocratic act influences the purpose to which it is directed. This is why the Christian gamer can only be an imperfect disciple of game at best.

It is the fact of game *being a set of techniques* which gives it authenticity over organic social competence in machine society.

* “Technocratic society is defined by human will and know-how to the exclusion of all else.” – James Kalb

“I like and read all those blogs, but would they appeal to a 21-year-old man from a blue collar/rural background, perhaps not highly educated? ”

The working class/blue-collar men are better able to understand reality and tend to not have their heads up their asses. A lot of highly educated young men and women are absolute idiots and make me wonder why we spend so much money on education when that money would be better spent on plastic surgery for pets or something equally as gay.

I highly doubt that white-collar people are on average smarter than blue-collar people. It’s just that blue-collar types hate sitting at a desk all day or would rather be on a real farm doing honest work than have their soul sucked out of their ass working in a cubicle.

I say this as a guy who’s going into college. I do think that blue-collar types have less patience for abstract discussions and are more into the practical aspects of life(which goes into their realistic nature) but I don’t know for sure. I’ve never had an abstract discussion with a blue-collar man.

But with these types, you just need to be direct and they’ll appreciate it. You don’t need to wine and dine them to knock sense into them like most of the nancyboy moderns we having prancing around.

That being said, Chronicles would be good because they talk about a wide range of topics, not just feminism but Zippy’s and the Orthosphere is better in this regard because it has dealt with the manosphere head on instead of just denouncing it a few times like Chronicles.

“It would be nice if some youngish Christian man started a non-game blog that wrote in clear and concrete terms what’s wrong with how young men are being taught to relate to women. ”

Is this a hint? Malcolm does have his own blog, but I haven’t read much from it.

“The first lesson could be about how you don’t have to take on some other man’s kid. This would ultimately be beneficial to women as well because most women do want to marry and if they figure out that no man will marry a woman who’s had an OOW child, maybe they’ll learn to stop having OOW children.”

I don’t think that most of these unwed mothers actually conciously want to have a child out of wedlock so it’s rather easy to get them to logically realize that having illegitimate is bad and selfish but logic isn’t worth shit in the heat of the moment. I’m not excusing it, I’m just not sure how saying that it’s bad would help the situation unless I’m not with the times and people think that single motherhood is completely a-ok or even great.

“* “Technocratic society is defined by human will and know-how to the exclusion of all else.” – James Kalb”

Gavrila, I don’t understand what Kalb is saying about the will. I thought of the will as a spiritual quality not a utilitarian one but when I think ” the will” I automatically think Nietszche. Does the will mean something I am not aware of?

Is this a hint? Malcolm does have his own blog, but I haven’t read much from it.

Heh, this is a topic I don’t take on too often, except occasionally to criticize things I’ve seen or read. Mostly because I’m really not the guy to go to for this type of advice in general, not the least of which because of my age.

Svar at 8:33
Well, maybe you’re right about that. I did mention the name of Zippy’s blog in the comments at Rural Revolution, so maybe the young man will find his way here and find it useful, I don’t know.

As to OOW births being seen as o-kay…yes. There is no longer any shame in it among lower/working class types so far as I can tell. Actually, even upper class types have no moral problem with it, really, it’s just that they know it’s an entirely inferior way to raise a child, so they don’t do it themselves.

Anyway, just to clarify: I’m not advising that people learn game or anything. I just think the young man needed some practical advise to wash the romantic and feminist notions out of his mind.

I do find the game sites troubling in general; right now they all seem to be posting the same comments, “If only Elliot Rodger had learned game, all those lives would have been spared! Game saves lives!” I think that it is dreadful to use an incident like this mass murder, which was obviously due to the young man’s serious mental illness and NOT due to his being a virgin/involuntarily celibate, and use it to promote a political ideology, a sexual strategy, a pick up artistry manual, or game. And of course, all the feminists are countering with, “Gamers are misogynistic! Elliot Rodger was misogynist! Misogyny kills!”

Uh, no. Misongyny doesn’t kill. Lack of sex doesn’t kill. Mental illness can kill, though. Game wouldn’t have cured this boy. Feminism wouldn’t have either. And actually, apparently mentally health treatment wasn’t curing him either, since he reportedly had a bevy of therapists by whom he was being treated.

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